


interstitial

by sodiumflare



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Attempted Rape, Gen, Genderbend, Rule 63, give me genderbend or give me death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:37:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4779014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodiumflare/pseuds/sodiumflare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan, Sherlock thinks, is a complicating variable.</p>
            </blockquote>





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_Well she said she'd stick around_  
_Until the bandages came off_  
_But these mama's boys just don't know when to quit_  
  
Joan would say that Sherlock doesn't know when to leave well-enough alone. Joan would be right. So possibly when investigating a petty purse-snatching ring, one should quit before it escalates to kidnapping.   
  
At least when Joan could be kidnapped along with her. Joan, Sherlock, thinks is a complicating variable.   
  
On the other hand, Joan has her right hand free and her mobile in her jacket pocket, with Lestrade on speed dial; she has since the incident with the Moroccan hash dealer. So Sherlock notes the slight weakness right wrist of the man holding her and throws her weight hard to the side. The man drops her like a sack of potatoes, and Sherlock lashes out with her leg, noting that satisfying crack as her boot heel meets the soft side of the kneecap. The man goes down, shrieking in pain, and it's all very satisfying until his friend - close-shaven, built like a fire plug - tackles her like a produce truck.   
  
He learned to box in his youth, she notes distantly, before spitting out a mouthful of blood and baring her teeth.   
  
\--  
  
She examines herself in the mirror. In places, the bruises on her abdomen can't be covered with two hands.   
  
She notes that it hurts to breathe. Disregards the fact. Breathing's boring, breathing will take care of itself. It doesn't feel like anything's broken. To be safe, she wraps her torso in tape before buttoning her shirt. Fortunately, it's one of her looser ones.   
  
Joan is, predictably, standing sentry outside the bathroom door.  "And?" she asks, following Sherlock down the stairs.  
  
"You're out of toothpaste," Sherlock says, settling on the couch. "Tea?"   
  
"No, I mean that. Today. With the - thugs. I was half-tempted to let Lestrade make good on his threat to fit you with a tracking collar."  
  
"I'd like to see him try."   
  
\--   
  
Sherlock's holding herself a little carefully - damage to her ribs, Joan thinks. Sherlock would tell her if anything was broken, she reassures herself. Well, probably. Possibly as a concession, Sherlock sets the telly to a news report while Joan gets the vegetables for a stir fry out of the refrigerator, and Joan nearly drops a head of bok choy when Sherlock sets a carrot on the cutting board and picks up a knife.   
  
"You'll want to wash that first," Joan says, "but are you actually intending to help make dinner?"  
  
Sherlock starts to shrug, winces halfway through. "You were helpful today."  
  
By which you mean I called Lestrade before you could be beaten half to death, Joan thinks, says instead, "It seemed the thing to do."   
  
The next morning, Joan wheedles Sherlock into accepting half a piece of toast with her tea, watches Sherlock moving a little easier, concludes no permanent damage.   
  
\--   
  
And they're in the back of a panel van, striped pale with light from the vent, wrists and ankles wrapped in duct tape. The van takes a sharp turn, and they are rolled into the door, and Joan feels Sherlock's body, tensed against hers and perfectly still.   
  
And then later in the woods, Joan is on the ground with blood gushing from her nose and trying to breathe around the bruising, and one of the men is beating Sherlock's head calmly and efficiently against the side of the truck, and then when his fingers are working at the buttons of Sherlock's blouse, her hands still taped uselessly in front of her, and her face bruised and blank over his shoulder, Joan shouldn't be at all surprised when Sherlock lunges forward whip-fast and catches the man's earlobe in her teeth at the same time that she shoves her hands down the man's unbuttoned trousers, grabs hard, and  _pulls_.   
  
The man screams, and Sherlock shoves him away, spitting out a hunk of flesh as she does so before dropping to her knees and seizing a rock between her hands. She brings it down on his head once, twice before dropping it to the side.   
  
She looks up at Joan. There's blood on her mouth. It matches Joan's; she's bitten through her lip.   
  
Joan wants to ask if she's okay, can't remember how.   
  
Sherlock manages to wrest the folding knife from Joan's back pocket, and between the two of them, they unfold the blade and clusily saw through their bonds. "Faster," Sherlock hisses.  
  
"I didn't think you'd like it if I missed and got your wrist instead," Joan says, although there's enough blood on her hands that they'd never been able to tell anyway.  
  
When her hands are free, Sherlock stands and walks around to the front of the truck, looking for the keys, and Joan takes the opportunity to kick their assailant in the ribs.   
  
Inelegant, but it makes her feel better.   
  
They go to a clinic afterwards, because Joan knows she'll need stitches and she's hoping she'll be able to convince Sherlock of the same - her scalp is still bleeding enough to make Joan nervous. They've already dropped their assailant off with Lestrade. Sherlock had identified him as Roger Moody from an ID in the glovebox, and in the van, Joan asks her, a bit tentatively, if she thinks he could be tied to Moriarty.  
  
"Unlikely," she says after a moment. 'Moriarty would have been more." She pauses. "Ambitious."   
  
It's not a comforting notion.   
  
-   
  
She knows - she  _knows_ \- that Sherlock dislikes being reminded of the boundaries of her body. Tall, thin to the point of being worrisome, and androgynous, she presents - deliberately, she supposes, because everything she does is deliberate - as neither one nor the other but somewhere in between. Joan has seen Sherlock wield her femininity like a weapon when she wants to, magicking hips and breasts and soft, fluttering consonants a half-register higher than her usual apparently out of thin air, and then vanish them in the space between one stride and the next, and then she's a slim slip of a figure inexplicably in a dress.   
  
\--  
  
"Can I look at your head?" Joan asks quietly.  
  
"I imagine Sarah did an admirable job," Sherlock says. An admirable job, and six stitches.   
  
"Please," Joan says, like  _I need to be close to you_ , and when Sherlock doesn't speak, Joan interprets it as assent and slides forward on the couch. It's a bit Afghanistan again: moving slowly, telegraphing everything, and Joan carefully probes the area. Sherlock's hair is still matted with blood - Sarah had done a fine quick job, but Sherlock wasn't going to stay in the clinic for any longer than absolutely necessary, and Sarah had understood, had left part of the job that Joan could do at home. "You'll need a bath," Joan says, drops a kiss to Sherlock's part.   
  
When she brings Sherlock extra towels and fresh clothes (black linen pants and a white silk shirt - Sherlock manages to dress up even when dressing down), the bathroom is steaming and damp, with condensation fogged thick on the mirror. For good measure, she has also brought the tea, which she places next to the sink with a clink of china on enamel. "Get out when you're ready," Joan says. "I'll be downstairs."  
  
Sherlock is ramrod straight in the tub. "Stay," she says.   
  
\--  
  
Joan's sleeves are pushed up to the elbow - her knits may be less striking than Sherlock's pressed suits, but they're a world more practical for cleanup - and she kneels next to the tub. "Eyes," she says, and Sherlock closes them obediently as Joan wrings a washcloth over her head, then uses it to sponge the dried blood free from Sherlock's head and neck. Her hair, when wet and brushed, reaches nearly to her shoulders in back. The water around her is faintly pink.  
  
When Sherlock requests it, Joan passes her her toothbrush from the sink; Sherlock brushes, spits toothpaste into the bathwater. Joan moves on to scrubbing Sherlock's hands. When her nails are sufficiently clean, Joan drains the tub.  
  
"Stand," she says, and Sherlock does. Joan passes her the towels. "Be careful around your stitches," she says. "I'll be downstairs when you're ready."  
  
\--  
  
Sherlock is not looking forward to the nightmares.   
  
She doesn't sleep for three days, ignores Joan's increasingly worried hints, solves three cases by email and two by text, and then sends Lestrade a barrage of abusive texts berating him for the lack of interesting preoccupations. When he doesn't respond, and with Mrs. Hudson wisely avoiding 221B, she turns on Joan. It's precisely the wrong thing to do.  
  
"As a doctor," Joan says, eyes flashing, "Sarah felt that you had no business running around London at all hours in midwinter with a mild concussion. As your friends, Lestrade and I agreed. And as your friend and your doctor - and your blogger - I can tell you that you aren't fit to go anywhere without sleep."   
  
Sherlock's brain stutters on the word "friend" before discarding it and moving on. "I'm perfectly fine," she says.  
  
"Yawning on a suspect won't intimidate them very well," Joan says without looking up from her laptop.   
  
Knowing Joan is right doesn't make it any easier.   
  
\--  
  
Sherlock dreams --   
  
\-- a hand covering her own, a forearm over her throat, and now another face, and then hands, again (always hands) --  
  
\-- Sherlock wakes on the couch, gasping into the gloom.   
  
A noise from the chair startles her; Joan, shifting under a blanket. She's awake, curled in her chair like a cat.   
  
"You fell asleep after tea," Joan says. "I decided not to wake you."  
  
Sherlock digests this.  
  
"Bad dreams?" Joan asks.   
  
"No," Sherlock says.   
  
"I thought not," Joan says. "Want to watch terrible telly?"  
  
They watch reruns of American sitcoms until Sherlock drifts off again.  
  
\--  
  
The next morning, Lestrade sends her a case. It's absurdly easy - a jilted father kidnapping his children to take them to Sweden, with the assistance of the lovelorn postman - but it gets her out  of the flat and into crisp winter London, and Joan seems happy, too.   
  
\--  
  
It's not as easy as all of that, of course.   
  
"It's just another beating," Sherlock says. She's rolled on her side, facing the wall. "It's not anything else."  
  
"But they didn't just beat you," Joan says, her fingers playing through Sherlock's hair. "They raped you. Or tried to."   
  
"There's no reason for it to affect me," Sherlock says to the wall.  
  
Joan is silent, but she slips down and under the sheets, tucking herself alongside Sherlock; their hands meet and hold under the covers, and it's answer enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just so in love with these two.
> 
> Epigraph from either Tori Amos or Tom Waits, depending on your preferred version. I go with Tori myself, but you do you, cupcake.


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